Yesterday, NBC News ran a breathless and, as it turned out, dishonest story about a “former Soviet counterintelligence official” who was also in the now-famous meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who was banned from entering the United States but to whom, for some reason, the Obama Justice Department granted a special permission just in time for the meeting with Trump, Jr.

The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counter intelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.

NBC News is not naming the lobbyist, who denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies. He accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.

The Russian-born American lobbyist served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the U.S., where he holds dual citizenship.

Naturally, the same cadre of NeverTrumpers and anti-Trumpers were quick off the mark tying this guy, Rinat Akhmetshin, by inference, to the KGB/SVR/FSB and to the Trump campaign. Sometimes to read this stuff you’d think there was a law against using Google or maybe your brain.

There is a problem with this story. Rinat Akhmetshin works for/with Fusion GPS.

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Thanks to "bracket creep," the inflation of the 1970s pushed millions of taxpayers into higher tax brackets even though their inflation-adjusted incomes were not rising. To help offset this tax increase and also to improve incentives to work, save, and invest, President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).